Tag: hatred

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Carry On Terror Far Right Edition by Lawson Akhigbe

Every crisis deserves a prompt, and the far right is nothing if not punctual. Five men were arrested early on a Sunday near RAF Fairford, the Gloucestershire base from which US B-1 bombers have flown missions against Iran, after a local farmer noticed three white vans heading towards it. Bomb disposal robots trundled about the woods, and dozens of villagers were bundled out of their homes. Nigel Farage, meanwhile, had already left the building, intellectually speaking.

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Kemi Badenoch and the economy: a plan stuck in the Tory comfort zone by The Guardian Editorial

To outlast a prime minister always counts as some kind of achievement for an opposition leader, although Kemi Badenoch cannot claim credit for Sir Keir Starmer’s downfall. Sir Keir’s wounds were mostly self-inflicted. To the extent that opposition pressure was involved, it was electoral threats from Reform UK and the Green party that stoked Labour party frustration to a regicidal pitch. The Tory leader’s role was largely as a spectator.

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Oprah, Oz and Phil by Lawson Akhigbe

There is a particular kind of American alchemy in which a Black woman from rural Mississippi, daughter of a maid, builds the most trusted media empire in the country on a diet of empathy, self help and the gospel of "live your best life," and then spends two decades unknowingly running a finishing school for men who would go on to embarrass her politics. Oprah Winfrey did not set out to produce Donald Trump's health czar and a cable news also ran who rides shotgun on ICE raids. She set out to help people cry productively on daytime television. The nursery was warm. What hatched from it was not.

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Two-Tier Policing: When Open Faces Become Terrorism and Balaclavas Become Civic Duty by Lawson Akhigbe

First, the Palestine Action episode. These were people who did not bother with balaclavas or the theatrical anonymity so beloved of the modern political cosplay set. They targeted warehouses and facilities linked to the supply of arms to the Israeli military. The Labour government, with the practised solemnity of a government discovering its inner authoritarian, reached for the terrorism laws. Proscription followed. Arrests followed. Jail terms followed. Even the barristers who dared to represent them found themselves in the crosshairs. The message was clear: damage property in the service of a cause the government finds inconvenient, and you will be treated as the domestic equivalent of Al-Qaeda, complete with the full legal theatre that accompanies such a designation.

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Is Nigeria’s Destiny Already Written? By Lawson Akhigbe

At moments of peak frustration, one is tempted to conclude that Nigeria has become a modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah; a place so committed to self-destruction that even the gods have abandoned any rescue plan and are simply waiting for the final chapter.

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